


Molten

by ThinkingCAPSLOCK



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Blood, Burns, Gen, Spirit Bending, Spirit World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThinkingCAPSLOCK/pseuds/ThinkingCAPSLOCK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dull force had filled your veins, like the fire had never really left, and you had made it your own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Molten

Everything hurt. And everything was red.

And off he wandered, that lone figure that you just hated so much. He was a blur against the bright sunrise, staining the bodies and the field before you with a second coating of deep red. You struggle, pulling your arms one by one from out beneath you, trying to twist and see him. But you can't. His body is a black shadow against the horizon, and it's getting smaller.

You twisted your head up. Raw flesh twisted against your skull, and dribbles of blood trickle from your cheeks onto the mud. A gasp gurgles into a scream from your burnt lips, and you cough. Red spit forms a splash against the brown. You cough again. 

Your arms shake as you push yourself up. Dirt and debris scrapes into your knees as you lift them. You shuffled forward, inch by inch, pain searing through you as the wind breezes on your skin. Teeth grinded together and yours fingers curl in the deep set, watery, blood soaked ground before you.

He was gone by the time you could look again. Off into the distance, off to make a name for himself somewhere else in the world. You shuffled towards your mother, gasping, panting, but you can't cry. There's nothing in you to cry. A hole, a weight sits in your chest and no matter how fast you shuffle, it doesn't go away. 

No matter how close you got to your mother, it doesn't lighten. You knew what to expect. Somehow you just couldn't bring yourself to think it. Dirt clung to your pants, grass brushes onto your elbows, a trickle of blood runs down your neck onto your collar, soaking in and making it damp and chafe as you shuffle. She doesn't move. None of them have moved in a very long time.

By the time you reach her, she still hasn't. You searched for her face but you can't find that. Even a bare patch of skin would work. But there's a blur in your vision and there's something off about your mother, and when you find her hand it's limp between your fingers and it's so cold and dry and rough. 

You squeezed it. It gave between your worn hand. You smoothed your thumb over a burn, the rough blackened skin coming off onto yours. It's delicate, fragile, and the last thing you have of her, and you loosened your grip. Something inside you sank even lower down, and you stared as best as you can at your mother, until the sun sets behind the fields and grass and barn and far off from the charred corpses you have in front of you.

Something shifted inside you. The sinking feeling, the hole and weight in your stomach, spreads through your limbs like molten metal. The heat from your face travelled down your spine, reaching your fingers as they curl into fists. You sat back. 

You screamed.

\------0------

Time passed. You were taken in by a woman nearby, but refused when they offered to heal your face with water bending. That burning was still there. Not from the pain. But from the anger. The dull force had filled your veins, like the fire had never really left, and you had made it your own.

None of this would have happened if there were no benders. Benders to oppress. That man could not have done this to you if he wasn't a fire bender. He couldn't have killed your family if he wasn't a fire bender. And you have never hated someone more in your entire life than these past few months. Not even when he extorted money from your father and threatened your mother.

Now they were dead and you were scarred. You couldn't smile. You couldn't frown. Your face had healed but it hadn't and you were not the man you had been. You didn't think you would ever be quite the same again. And oh, it was hard. You couldn't bring yourself to even look at the benders in your town. And there were so many it felt oppressing. Smothering. 

Most of your days were spent on the back porch, listening to the world pass by as you watched the sunset fall over and over, the reds and oranges always hitting the windows and the brown house you lived in before slipping into the blackness again. Every day it set, the more you felt something boil within your own veins. The more the benders around you seemed to walk with an air of prestige. Their noses far too high in the air as they looked down at the boy whose life had been cut short. 

Just another tragedy of a greedy man.

A greedy fire bender.

He had that power. Somewhere, some spirit or joker had decided that this cruel man should be able to use and wield the element of fire. To extort from other people. To kill those who went against him. To destroy any chance you had of living a normal life or smiling or expressing yourself any more. 

The more you looked, the more you saw. The way they would come to the aid of you non benders, because you were just too inferior to put out a fire or plow a field or catch a fish. Even in the small hub where you lived, it was all too obvious how they felt about you.

They thought you were beneath them. Just because you couldn't splash around or throw a rock without touching it. The heat under your skin flared. You gripped the arms of the rocker you sat in. The last flickers of orange dipped into the blue black of the starry sky. Something shifts in your chest again. Something making you want to leave. To escape from them. To get out of a place that worships and praises a talent one is born with that others can never hope to achieve.

The more you thought about it, the more you realized what you have to do. There had to be a way to balance the world again. It didn't matter you weren't the Avatar. The Avatar hadn't saved your parents, nor stopped those cruel people who used their bending to take advantage of the others. He couldn't be trusted.

You would have to do something about it yourself.

\------0------

No matter where you travelled, nothing seemed to change. There were people everywhere who were undergoing the same thing you had. It was always the benders who shrugged off your scars as something you had deserved. It was always the benders who teased and stole and dominated each and every town. They were the bullies. They were the cruelest. And they used the power to take advantage of people like you.

You got into fights. You spent a week recovering after being thrown into a frozen lake by an angry water bender you had caught beating on a non bender like yourself. It had been worth it. Acts like that made you sick to your stomach. And you had to stand up where others could not. 

But there was only so much you could do. There were only so many times molten blood, now yours, completely yours, would allow you to stand and fight and lose against them. There were only so many times you could ask people to listen to you before your words became empty. 

So you decided to stop travelling. You made your way through a deep jungle, finally managing to find your way into the depths of a swamp. The ground guggled and spurted beneath you, but you do no damage as you travel to its very core. Each step through the mossy ground, the twisting vines, brought you closer to somewhere to think. To plan. 

You knew there are others like you in the world, looking for someone to lead them against their oppressors. But you could not do that without action. You shifted a vine aside, eyes taking in the large tree before you. Careful, slow steps lead you upwards, and you sat at the trunk. A bit of dampness began to seep into your pants, but you crossed your legs and closed your eyes.

The air whispered around your face, and you slowly removed the mask you were so often wearing these days. You placed it against the moss covered ground, and again shut your eyes. 

The elements and sounds were overpowering as you waited and thought. The wind would gush harshly, the rain pelt down without ceasing. Birds screamed, lizards hissed, and flies buzzed at every moment. You took the energy as a blessing. You breathed in air and exhaled fire and stone and ash. Your mind was a powerful machine and it darted from thought to thought, from place to place calculating and destroying all else but how to take your much needed revenge.

\------0------

By the time you opened your eyes again, you were not in the same place you had closed them.

It is a swamp, certainly. But not any swamp you know of. And not the one you left. Everything was a dull brown, from the rivers to the trees to the sky itself. Your feet splashed through the different levels of damp, but the more the water seeps in the less damp it feels. A strange anomaly. 

You aren't sure how to question what happened, only that you should. Nothing felt right about being there. You felt no heat from the sun, no real lasting dampness or chill from the water. The bark has little scrape to it, and the atmosphere is low. A faint hum echoed across your ears.

Perhaps this is the place you hoped to get. A place to think. Or, perhaps, explore. You travelled under trees and through water, your clothes never getting soaked and your feet never aching. But still no thoughts on how to lead people against benders came to mind. You may equal in number, but not in resources. You needed action. Power. Something you could do that they never would be able to. There could be something here to help you, or there might not be. You weren't too sure one way or the other. But for the moment you were trapped here, and you made the most of it under the brown sky.

Time passed strangely. You were not sure if there were days or weeks that had passed, or even if something was happening along that line at all. Your mind never rested and your feet rarely did either. Occasionally you stopped to nap, to recharge, but you often found yourself continuing your thoughts into your dreams and into the depths of what you called the night.

\------0------

One day, you found a cave. It was set against a deep area. Monkeys littered the entrance, each without a face. It would have made you smile, had you been able to do anything other than one face for the past years of your life. The cave seemed like a good place to rest, relax, reconfigure your ideas. You stepped inside, the dank air filling your nose and yet having no smell. It pressed down, and you shake your shoulders as you press further.

It started as a twitter in the back of your head. A shaking. You glanced behind your shoulder, then back to the road ahead. Something was wrong with the ceiling. It was darker and longer. It shifted in coils, and clicked as it did. You followed the long body, each section covered in long, barbed legs, leading to the head that turned the moment you noticed it.

It seemed grotesque. A monkey face sat sprawled, contrasting the bug like structure of the rest of the creature. The face seemed to blink, and a woman's head with flowing, dirt stained black hair replaced the creature. 

"Who do we have here?"

A harsh, rasping voice, that echoed through the tunnel before it hit your ears with a resounding clap. It was deep, masculine, and eternal. Something about it shook you down to the core. You barely twitched as he shifted and crinkled forward, body creaking and shushing with the legs clicking as it rested mere inches from your face.

"I have not seen a person here in a very long time. Except an obnoxious boy, but I would prefer to forget about him."

Legs feel your body, your face, your hair. They preen and search as the face blinks between a woman and a young boy. Fear does not even cross your mind, despite the closeness to the creature and the way it flows around your body. It hardly matters. There were many strange things in the world.

"Tell me, what business do you have with Koh, the face stealer?"

You barely flinched at the name. Perhaps you were in the spirit world then. But that did not make you change your mind. It did not effect your goals. Not in the slightest. You were only concerned with evening odds. With freedom from the benders' oppression. From their tyranny and your inability to fight back.

"I am not here for you," your voice is a bit raspy. It has been a while since you had spoken. "I am merely here on my quest."

"And what quest is that, which would lead a mortal, non bender to the spirit world and my home without needing me?"

"I seek equality. And freedom from the reign of benders and the balance the Avatar believes he brings to our world."

You watch Koh shift again. His length filled the cavern, curling in on itself as legs twitch with a large laugh that runs through his entire body. The laughter shook the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It reaches somewhere within you, yet stirs nothing. You cannot express anything. There is nothing within you to express. Not to this creature.

When his laughing stops, you watched carefully as his face blinks a few times, settling on one of an older, bearded man. He watched your face for a while, but besides blinking, you move very little. If anything, you were bored. 

"You seek another form of equality? You wish to be free of benders?" his laugh shook every part of the cave, and creaks every part of his shelled body. "You wish to take revenge on your bending oppressors and what the Avatar has begun?"

"The Avatar grows old," you replied. "I wish to free everyone who is subjected to benders. I want a world free of their power, where we can thrive based on our own merits."

"You speak bold words for one without emotions," his hiss brushed your ear, an exhale of toxins and promise and you straightened your back.

"I have been subjected to the force and brutality of a bender, when I have done nothing wrong. I am not alone in this world. And I wish to set things right."

Two legs grabbed your shoulders, the barbs digging into your skin with little pain. Koh's face blinked before you again, as two long legs reached towards you.

"Then let me help you reach your goal, non bender."

\------0------

You stood before the house, bringing up one worn knuckle to rap on the door. The air is still. Behind you stretches a fast lot of land and grass, a familiar memory, but a still distant one. Creaking inside the house lets you prepare, and you set your fists by your side and stood straight. 

The wooden door opened, and there he stands. He's aged, but so have you. You're taller than him now, and wrinkles crease his face. His eyes narrowed, as he looked you over.

"Can I help you?" he asked. 

"I will give you a chance to fight to save your bending. If you refuse, I will take them away."

He laughed, and you feel the molten heat, the veins of your skin light in anger and controlled rage. You see the lines form on his face, the tilt of his head, the clasp of his stomach as he guffawed.

"Yeah, right."

He turned to go, but you launched out. You struggled. He shot a blast of fire at you that you deftly dodged. He yelled. You placed your fingers against him, digging them in. His will was weak. You moved in and shattered it with a swift movement. It took two seconds. It broke everything within him. You stepped back.

He twitched for a moment. He twitched like you had twitched when he had burnt your face with those hands. He flailed. He threw his arms out, he sobbed, and you stood there, hovering over him. There was no heat. He couldn't do it anymore. He had lost his flames and you felt your own course through your veins. Your own power.

You wanted to smile.


End file.
